Global EV Sales Up 63% In Q3 Thanks To Surge In China

Surprising absolutely no one, plug-in electric vehicles are the quickest growing branch of automotive industry today … and it has been that way since they were re-introduced to the world at the beginning of this decade.

However, in the third quarter of this year, sales increased by 63% year-over-year – to more than 287,000, at least according to the Bloomberg New Energy Finance report.

Sales of New Energy Vehicles in China – October 2017

The growth compared to second quarter is also fairly tangible at 23%.

BNEF states (again, fairly obviously to anyone following the segment) that China is the largest EV market fueled by significant incentives, which has lead more then 1 of every 2 plug-in sales coming from the region.

91,000 New Energy Vehicles were sold in China in October, including roughly 66,500 light vehicles – see report.

Europe finds itself in 2nd with a 24% share, while the North America – once the first – is now is third.

7 responses to "Global EV Sales Up 63% In Q3 Thanks To Surge In China"

Maybe I haven’t been paying close enough attention so this might be a dumb question. Various articles pointed to an incentive/government issue for the slow start to 2017 and then it got resolved and we get a big upswing. But it looks like 2016 had the same general shape. Is this an every year thing? i.e. do we expect a huge drop in Jan in China? Or do we expect a steady increasing ramp to just keep going?

This year was especially bad. China rewrote the list of approved EV’s for the federal credit. Only it was not available until March. No one wanted to buy in January or February only to find their model was not approved. Once the list came out, sales took off.

1. I noticed that range increase a few days (weeks?) ago too, but I don’t remember an article on it on Insideevs. Would be nice to see a review of that vehicle with the new range.
2. Why more money? Probably because they can. I’m guessing they feel they can sell all of them at that price. They can test the demand at that price then offer discounts if demand isn’t there, whereas if they don’t raise the price then they are guaranteed to end up with whatever lost opportunity there was in the extra money.